


Such End True Lovers Have

by Onceuponadisneypotter



Series: Half a Century of Poetry [3]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Body Dysphoria, Depression, M/M, Suicide, TW: Suicide, also partly by Tulips by Sylvia Plath, and tw: disability, both combined i think? sorta? not sure but i wanted to tag it anyway just in case <3, i think? sorta?, inspired by My Silks And Fine Array by William Blake, no beta we die like renfri, no happy ending, post-mountain, tw: depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:55:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25310476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Onceuponadisneypotter/pseuds/Onceuponadisneypotter
Summary: Those bright soft clothes might have belonged to Jaskier, but they do not belong to Julian anymore. After Geralt's words, Jaskier gives up his life as a travelling bard and becomes a farmhand. Jaskier is no more, but a life without Geralt and a life without music is not one he is willing to live.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: Half a Century of Poetry [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1825762
Comments: 4
Kudos: 99





	Such End True Lovers Have

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is inspired by the poem 'My Silks And Fine Array' by William Blake. The poem is split up in pieces throughout the fic, but I will place the entire text of it in the endnotes.
> 
> This is your final warning: this fic contains depressive thoughts and relatively graphic description of suicide. Read at your own risk.

Jaskier looked down at the colourful doublets in his bag. They were soft and delicate and pretty and everything he was not feeling at that moment. That did not mean, however, that he wasn’t slightly startled every time he saw himself in a reflective surface. For the first time in his life, he was wearing dull brown and dusty white clothes, sown to fit a farmer, not a noble-born bard. For the first time in his life, the clothes on his back scratched and itched, and, for the first time in his life, they did not hide his surprisingly strong stature that did not match his usual frail, dandelion-like behaviour. But, regardless of the lack of comfort, the lack of tailoring, the lack of colour and brightness that had characterised Jaskier the Travelling Bard, these clothes fit.

The first time he had seen his own reflection after the words Geralt had thrown at him, was when he stumbled upon a clear brook whilst making his way down the mountain. He had followed the stream in the hope it would lead him to civilisation, and, after a while, he had noticed something red reflecting next to him. His own clothes, bright and happy and  _ too excitable _ . The longer his reflection followed him, the more they felt like inches of red lead sinkers round his neck, cutting his oxygen, filling up the white inside and green around him with a choking noise. So he had tossed it out. He had taken off the precious, expensive jacket and thrown it in the mud behind him. The man who wore colours as bright as his smile was gone. He had died the moment Geralt had turned his back to him, and he would not be resurrected.

The tailor had been surprised, but at least he had been kind enough to attempt to hide it. It was not his fault Jaskier - no, he reminded himself,  _ Julian  _ \- had grown up around politicians and nobles with more secrets to keep than grains of sand in the world, and noticed more than people knew. But, to the tailor’s credit, he had  _ tried.  _ And, to the tailor’s credit, he had paid Jask- Julian well. There were plenty of noblemen in Brughes who would be willing to buy them, after all. The fabric was a high quality, and it would not take many adjustments to make the doublets look brand new. 

In a nearby village, Julian found a job at a local farm. He left the moment rumours started to spread of drowners terrorising the nearby stream.

* * *

_ My silks and fine array, _

_ My smiles and languish'd air, _

_ By love are driv'n away; _

_ And mournful lean Despair _

_ Brings me yew to deck my grave: _

_ Such end true lovers have. _

* * *

There seemed to be no place that had not heard of Jaskier the Bard and his muse, Geralt the Witcher. Jaskier-  _ Julian  _ had never thought he would regret being so talented. There was no town he could travel, village he could go without hearing some other singer butcher  _ Toss a Coin  _ or another one of his heroic retellings of Geralt’s contracts. There seemed to be no place on the entire Melitele-damned Continent that had not heard of the white-haired hero and the famous bard. With his shaved head and commoner’s clothes, the crowds had yet to make a connection between the stranger who had wandered into their town and the disappeared Master Bard, but it would only be a matter of time. There had to be  _ some  _ place on the Continent where nobody knew, where there were no monsters, no Witchers, no travelling bards reminding Julian what he had lost. 

It had been foolish to fall in love with Geralt, Julian knew that. Not because of the whole ‘Witchers don’t have feelings’ bullshit, and not even because Geralt seemed to be completely straight, but because it was abundantly clear that it was never meant to be. Jaskier was a bright, loud, energetic nuisance in Geralt’s dark, stoic and straight-forward world, a weak mortal getting into messes he needed other people to solve. Witchers clean up messes, they don’t travel with them. And they  _ certainly  _ don’t fall in love with them. Yet, Julian had fallen in love with him anyway. One day, he had caught his own reflection in a puddle as he walked towards the cows to milk them, and he had barely recognised himself. The man staring up from him from the watery surface looked sad and tired and dead, a far cry from the young man in a bar in Posada, receiving one golden coin from a white-haired Witcher in exchange for his heart.

He didn't remember when _exactly_ he had fallen in love. It might have been the first moment he saw the dark, brooding stranger with his long, white hair. Maybe it had been when Geralt had pleaded the elves to let Jaskier live. Maybe it had been after, when he had begrudgingly agreed to let Jaskier travel with him. Maybe it was all the little moments gathered together. Yet never, no matter what Jaskier did, had the Witcher given any sign that he knew of the bard's feelings, nor had he given any indication if the feelings were returned. So Jaskier had kept his distance. He had satisfied himself with singing the Witcher's praises, washing the Witcher's hair, defending the man's honour and reputation. He had had to make do with watching from a distance, closing his eyes as he bedded another woman or man and pretended the long hair brushing his skin, the strong hand grabbing his hips, the flesh causing the pressure inside him and around him was Geralt's, rather than the innkeeper's daughter, the blacksmith's son, the nobleman and, the next day, his wife. Geralt was not his, and, Jaskier knew, he would never be. 

* * *

_ His face is fair as heav'n, _

_ When springing buds unfold; _

_ O why to him was't giv'n, _

_ Whose heart is wintry cold? _

_ His breast is love's all worship'd tomb, _

_ Where all love's pilgrims come. _

  
  


* * *

Julian thought that Jaskier had died the moment he had turned away from Geralt, but he had been wrong. Jaskier truly died when Julian and the other stablehands tried to capture and calm down a cow, panicked after a wolf, starving from a harsh winter, tried to attack her, and crushed Julian’s hand. Three fingers and his wrist were broken, and he would never be able to play the lute again. He wrote a formal letter to the University of Oxenfurt, informing them of  _ Jaskier’s untimely demise after suffering from the Red Plague,  _ granting his property to his sister and the rights to his songs to Essie. The letter was accompanied by a lute, leaving no doubt in the rector’s mind that the star student had, indeed, passed away. A day of mourning was announced, but any attempts at collecting Jaskier’s body to bury him in the Poet’s Corner turned out unsuccessful. The village the anonymous informer had said was the final resting place of the famous lyricist had created a mass grave to bury their dead, and any attempts at identifying which body belonged to Jaskier had been hopeless. Instead, a remembrance stone was resurrected in the University Garden. 

Winter. Spring. Summer. Autumn. Winter. Spring. Summer. Autumn. Winter. Spring. Summer. Autumn. Winter. Spring. Every day, every week, every month, every season, every year was the same and the same and the same. His hand had healed enough for him to be able to continue work on the farm, but the three broken fingers were permanently bent out of shape. When the weather got cold, his joints hurt. 

Summer. Autumn. Winter. Spring. Summer. Autumn. Winter. Spring. Summer. Autumn. Every day the same damn thing, the same damn routine, the same damn view, the same damn people, the same damn darkness, darkness,  _ darkness  _ inside him. When one day, a brown-haired, blue-eyed, brightly-clothed travelling bard performed in the village’s inn, Julian stood outside looking in and saw himself. If he squinted his eyes, Old Joe the blacksmith, with his long, grey hair, could almost look like Geralt. If he slightly closed his ears so the words were blurred, the bard’s song could almost sound like Jaskier’s. And if he ignored the pain in his joints, the pain in his back, the calluses on his fingers from years of hard work, he could almost imagine he was young again, back on the Path with Geralt, living a life of happiness and adventure. But when he opened his eyes and ears all of it was gone. His own reflection in the mirror stared back at him, but that body was not his. This life was not his. Nothing here was his, was him, was anything worth living for. Every day the same damn day, every week the same damn week, every month the same damn- Julian turned away and started walking.

The first frost of the season was yet to arrive, so the forest floor was soft and wet and pliant under his spade. The graveyard’s hill looked out on the entire village, bathing in the early Autumn sun. The yellow, red and brown leaves underneath Julian gathered to cover the bottom of the grave he had dug smelled of decay and ground and, when he lied down, of home. And when the steel -  _ silver for monsters, steel for humans  _ a distant voice in his head said - knife pierced his skin, grazed his rib, cut his lung and then, as the hand that would never play again moved, tore his heart in half, Julian welcomed the sharp pain over the numbness that had filled the years before. 

The dead stablehand was found by the baker’s widow visiting her husband’s grave. A small funeral service was held, and the bard, who had stayed in the village overnight, would never know for whom his mourning song was sung. A stone with the initial  _ J  _ carved into it by the blacksmith marked the spot of the grave the inhabitant had dug for himself. The spade, tied to it a purse with a few silver coins and the note ‘payment for use’, was returned to its rightful owner. The people spoke about the man who had appeared in the village one day refusing to tell anything about his past and had now died for a little while, but he was soon forgotten in the busyness of day-to-day life. It was not until a storm dislodged a few roof tiles of the farm the stablehand had been living at that a strange poem was found, signed  _ Jaskier _ , like the bard of old:

* * *

_ Bring me an axe and spade, _

_ Bring me a winding sheet; _

_ When I my grave have made, _

_ Let winds and tempests beat: _

_ Then down I'll lie, as cold as clay.  _

_ True love doth pass away! _

**Author's Note:**

> My Silks And Fine Array - Blake
> 
> My silks and fine array,  
>  My smiles and languish'd air,  
> By love are driv'n away;  
>  And mournful lean Despair  
> Brings me yew to deck my grave:  
> Such end true lovers have.
> 
> His face is fair as heav'n,  
>  When springing buds unfold;  
> O why to him was't giv'n,  
>  Whose heart is wintry cold?  
> His breast is love's all worship'd tomb,  
> Where all love's pilgrims come.
> 
> Bring me an axe and spade,  
>  Bring me a winding sheet;  
> When I my grave have made,  
>  Let winds and tempests beat:  
> Then down I'll lie, as cold as clay.   
> True love doth pass away!


End file.
